NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Brad
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NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Brad »

I know we super wimped it last night.

BUT has anyone taken level/skill appropriate characters around to see if its actually OKAY? ( Or is it just too easy now )

Please let me know, i want to get this back up so we can get back to SK development.

Thanks
Brad

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Darge
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

Group play in ice Titan area felt ridiculously easy. We even brought in a lvl 40ish and lvl 50ish pair of crits and they had no trouble staying alive in zoos with other crits in the 80's and our one healer barely paying attention.

The npcs don't hit hard, their ice breath is weak, and their accuracy is low. The npcs in that area are less dangerous than thumpers and rockmen in the sdc1 caves. Obviously it's a bit of a balancing act because you have to mind the npcs (in theory at least) during the fight with ice Titan, but...

Then there's ice Titan himself, who was an absolute wimp before any of the formula changes began, and probably still is. The encounter feels a lot like it would if you took the BanditLord in nl borderlands, gave him more health and let him loose against any group of lvl 75 or larger crits. He just gets completely out scaled. I'm not sure it matters at this stage of content.
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Brad
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Brad »

Okay ill look at flows. ( You think its to-hit? damage is a bit low also ? )

What about the other areas?

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Darge
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

It's difficult to say without knowing your intent for the area, but here's how things look.

Ice rats swing once a round, deal about 300 dmg per melee hit, and poison on hit. They also have stun on their hits, but with Ningi helm on, you resist all stuns when they do connect anyway. They don't appear to have any other abilities.

IceSerpents swing twice a round and deal from 300 to 600 per strike, with poison on hit. They cast icebreath, which hits for about 100 damage per cast, when the only f/i resist is from Nameless lord plate.

Flowbeasts swing twice a round and deal about 300 damage per hit,with poison and push on hit.

So the damage is obviously low on a 1v1 basis. But maybe the main problem is that against 61 agility and 40 longsword skill, the npc's miss virtually every attack. This is tricky to balance because if you're in there solo, take off your Ningi helm and allow yourself to be stunned, you will quickly be killed because you can't be missed when stunned. So they are a good in a swarm if they can actually hit.

Now, my understanding of the "miss" calculation for combat is that it is at least in part an agility stat vs agility stat roll. If that's true, I think an initial tuning pass could be as simple as increasing their agility stat, so we can start seeing how much they get armor and weapon blocked.

I think Piranha caves looks good. Carnifish are on the weak side, but have high accuracy and prone constantly. It's hard to get a read on Tortoise's given their fewer crit count, but cavesharks two solid damage swings per round and 1k dmg DoT seems like a good dificulty. Everything there is pretty accurate too, so a party should be sufficiently challenged.

Meadows looks good. Gnomes looks good.
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My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

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Darge
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

One other thing: while clerics looks decent for solo play, they still do shatter bottles in sack, which obviously hurts solo play for most classes badly.
SIN
My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

trav: you bad bad girl

Nevyn
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

Brad, from my limited testing last night I agree w Darge on the ice floes. I think their to hit needs to be increased. Ice floes are used to grow similar to gnomes but more friendly to solo players. Currently their to hit is to low to really test. Depending on how high to hit is adjusted damage may need to increase.


Gnomes felt good I think it maybe about right

Meadows felt like it was on the edge and maybe a little weaker than it should be. However, it's current state will allow a wider player base to hunt there, which is good. Previously meadows required a very strong party

Lava city: Max tested and said firelords are still crazy, see his post for information.

Sullen forest seemed fine needs more testing.

Sk cave felt better it needs more testing

Did not get a chance to test sk3+, I will be able to provide more feed back after I get the kids in bed tonight

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Brad »

Any final feedback on the ice flows?

Can we call those DONE or are they too wimpy for level approps still?

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Darge
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

It's in a good spot, imo. Challenging enough that you won't mass drag zoos anymore until you at least have ice ablation rings on your squishier characters, but not so much that groups coming in can't hunt there at all. The crits also add a touch of difficulty to ice Titan.

The only thing I'd do further is give more rewards from it for the new difficulty, by adding stat flower drops and/or the tiers that drop from betrayer/gnome caves. The rewards from Meadows are comparatively much better, and so currently I see no reason to hunt there instead of Meadows, if you don't need nuggets.
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Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

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luckyman
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by luckyman »

I went there in nl2 last night and this was rediculous.

Three healers level 85 + two barbs one level 85 and one level 87 and one ment lvl 78 was a mass slaughter.

The level 78 had nl plate and lanis on and we could not keep her alive. The healers were dying every 30 seconds and i could not keep them ccd. Even the barbs could not live. Your telling me a lvl 87 barb should die in floes?



Look at nl1 i can not keep a lvl 76 barb alive without ahealer. But the damage there is appropiate to the gains. Do not increase the damage take your nl1 numbers put them in nl2 with the fast rounds and bam increase in damage.


Currently way over powered for level 78s to live......

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Brad »

luckyman wrote:I went there in nl2 last night and this was rediculous.

Three healers level 85 + two barbs one level 85 and one level 87 and one ment lvl 78 was a mass slaughter.

The level 78 had nl plate and lanis on and we could not keep her alive. The healers were dying every 30 seconds and i could not keep them ccd. Even the barbs could not live. Your telling me a lvl 87 barb should die in floes?



Look at nl1 i can not keep a lvl 76 barb alive without ahealer. But the damage there is appropiate to the gains. Do not increase the damage take your nl1 numbers put them in nl2 with the fast rounds and bam increase in damage.


Currently way over powered for level 78s to live......
Your level 85 can't survive in ICE FLOWS?

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by luckyman »

Brad my whole party continually wiped. Lvl 87 barb died trying to recover items dropped while fully zerked.

Edit: full party points and vamping hp did not save the poor barbs.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Brad »

Just to be clear, on NL-TEST?

In the last day ?

People were claiming last night it was underpowered. ( Sorry im confused )

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Teh_Cheat »

As long as you wear appropriate gear to protect against the ICE and the STUN, you should be fine. The melee isn't much of an issue.
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

I would say that a level 78 Ment in NL plate with 2 Lani's on and prot ice cast is appropriate gear. There is not a lot of iceprot gear available at that size, though they could try a Martn perhaps, not sure how much prot it has.

I've not tested extensively myself however, if its instantly gibing a crit of that size and gear it maybe a little much.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Teh_Cheat »

Plenty of PSI-cutter items available in multiple slots that are able to be used. The Ice Ablation II rings have a ton of ice protection as well.
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

Keep in mind that the light ice prot pots sold by sdc vendors give 1k ice prot, and the heavy prot pots that drop in ice floes give 2k ice prot too. May even actually be double those values, since I'm pretty sure prot vs tiers is halved and that's how I tested. Though their duration could stand to be increased from 30 rounds, even if they are 2 charges.
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My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by luckyman »

I was in nl2 not the test brad.

With all the prot gear that the level 78 ment was wearing she should not need an additional 2k prot grom a bottle that is rediculous darge.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

Just tested with my Pally with Ken.

At level 88 my pally was taking 2400 without a cutter on and the damage was not reduced below 1970ish no matter how many additional cutters I added. From there I could further reduce the damage with prots from a ment to 700ish points from a level appropriate ment or 600ish if a skill 42/quirk maxed ment proted me.

Ken tested with me and saw around 4742 damage with just cutters reduced to 3050ish once he buffed himself with prot ice.

additional prot from items was able to reduce the number some what, but 3k is a huge gap to cover for a nonpally.

Yes potions, however the do not last long enough to be part of this conversation.

I would suggest turning it down to about 2000ish ice damage incoming for nonPallys. The result would be that a ment/healer buff is valuable and almost required but not necessary once obtaining rings from titan. Also it will open the area back up to size appropriate crits whom are getting destroyed trying to level.

on a side note, the prot ice the SK Bow claims to have is not working . it did not reduce incoming ice damage at all


Summery:
*reduce damage to approx. 2k on nonpallies (after psicut)
*only 1 cutter worked to reduce damage no diminishing returns for additional cutters
*Prot Ice on SK level 85 weapons did not work

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

Finally got around to getting hard numbers:

SDC Ice Floes - NL Alt 2 (should be the same as NL Test now)
Lvl 75/35 ment, 4391 hp with crystalline regeneration (at least 150 hp below CH maxxed).
Relevant Gear: Nin helm, NL plate, 2 lanapi's
20/20 party leadership Ice Dampner
0/5 Ice Dancing quirk

Base Damage with gear- 2.8k from Ice Serpent icebreath
With Sk35 Ice Prot, self cast with Lanapi staff- 2.2k
With above ice prot and vendor (light) prot pot- 1.1k

Either you all are doing something terribly wrong, or are counting ice damage from double breaths, a byproduct of fast rounds. My underleveled, underskilled, underhp'ed ment can survive there fine in a party so long as two ice serpents aren't allowed to be pulled and as soon as he had an Ice Ablation 2 ring, it'd be pitifully easy.
SIN
My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

trav: you bad bad girl

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Serefin »

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Last edited by Serefin on Tue Feb 23, 2016 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Serefin »

Darge wrote:Group play in ice Titan area felt ridiculously easy. We even brought in a lvl 40ish and lvl 50ish pair of crits and they had no trouble staying alive in zoos with other crits in the 80's and our one healer barely paying attention.
How did Mars let this slip <G>.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

Darge, the testing ken and I did was with 1 ice serpent we isolated to use for tests. And you really think one serpent should doover 2k damage through all of that prot unless you use a potion? 30 rounds is nothing. That level of ice damage is unreasonable for that level. If you think it is to easy once you get ice rings ask for the damage in the area to have a higher Melee damage component.


A party should not wipe because they had a couple Ice serpents spawn on them. Be reasonable. The ice damage in this area is well out of reasonable balance from the test ken and I did.

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Darge
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Darge »

Nevyn wrote:And you really think one serpent should doover 2k damage through all of that prot unless you use a potion?
Yes.

It's almost like those potions serve exactly zero purpose except for that one particular area.

Also, I'm not sure if people even know this, but you can right click betrayer scales and get something like 1k ice prot on top of the base f/I resistance it gives, along with probably the most fun effect in the game. Lvl 80 req on those is the only problem, but sdc3 areas are basically lvl 80+ areas anyway.
SIN
My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

trav: you bad bad girl

Nevyn
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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

Those potions are the loot, you sell them, that's what they are good for.

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Re: NL-TEST with level appropriate characters

Post by Nevyn »

Not to mention that once someone has ice rings all that danger from ice is moot. Better to reduce the ice and balance the risk with Melee damage and ice. That way the risks reward always stays in balance.


People fight zoos in drakkar, we have for 20 years. It's what makes it fun. You feel like your character is powerful. You want to square off vrs a major creature go engage ozo, he has a butt kicking waiting for you.

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